LAT: Land Trade Would Allow Drilling in (Alaska) Refuge

[DeepModem Mom]

THE NATION
Land Trade Would Allow Drilling in Refuge
Fish and Wildlife agency endorses letting an Alaska Native firm swap wetlands for protected areas. Other Natives and conservationists object.

By Julie Cart, Times Staff Writer


The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has given preliminary approval to a land exchange in Alaska that would allow a Native-owned energy company to drill for oil on 110,000 acres within the nation's third-largest wildlife refuge along a remote section of the Yukon River.

The deal has the support of Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, who set a deadline for the agreement in a rider to an appropriations bill pending in Congress.

The land swap not only would allow oil drilling within the 9-million-acre Yukon Flats refuge, which borders the more famous Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it could necessitate the building of roads and a pipeline through wetlands that Fish and Wildlife had nominated for wilderness protection in 1987.

Native groups that live near the river oppose the deal because of potential harm to wildlife, including salmon, waterfowl, caribou and moose. Critics also note that the Fairbanks-based oil company has paid millions of dollars in fines for dumping toxic waste at drilling sites on Alaska's North Slope.

"This deal is an open-door invitation to carve out any piece of refuge for commercial gain," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, Fish and Wildlife Service director under President Clinton and now executive vice president of the group Defenders of Wildlife. "It's really an affront to what it means to be a national wildlife refuge."...


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-yukon22oct22,1,6911473.story?coll=la-home-nation

[blindpig]

1. Amazing, it's beyond greed, more like spiteful vandalism. n/t

[ochazuke]

2. Yeah, I think they want to destroy all nature...

so that when they rapture, they can look down on the rest of us living in hell-on-earth.

[DeadManInc]

3. Land Trade

This is truly sad. Bush and company have been trying to rape the land in AK since he was appointed presidency. I do not understand why the people in Ak do not try to prevent this.

[Auntie Bush]

4. They don't prevent it because it means JOBS! To hell with wildlife!

[Bandit]

5. The people do try and sometimes are quite successful

Lisa Murkowski has been pushing a land trade near Juneau of some pristeen land and every single reply she received was against the land trade. She went ahead and pushed for it anyway. People fought against it and to date it has been stopped. If she gets elected she will probably get it passed and it means heavy logging and opening a mine in the area. People around Juneau would lose a tremendous amount of land and get almost nothing in return. Half the acreage which has been clear cut and it is located about four hundred miles away without access. No roads in SE Alaska. Most everyone lives on islands.

[newyawker99]

6. Hi DeadManInc!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: